It feels almost like FM Live. That was the title I gave to the news announcing Pucek's guide to playing FM 2008  online. Seconds after I had published the info I learnt how wrong I was regarding this title. What happened, you may ask. Well, Reaper suddenly stormed into our Graveyard Plaza office, his face red. Were it not for the broken lift and consequent exertion resulting from having to go up a few flights of stairs he would have surely started screaming.He was holding a few tickets in his hand. He murmured: 'FM Live...', fell heavily onto an armchair and fainted. Unlike the brave Greek messenger of Marathon. Reaper soon regained his senses and explained to all gathered around his frail body what all the fuss was about.

As it happened, a group of five people from our ranks had been invited to test the mettle of FM Live beta version. After a brief scramble between all of us, the ones chosen to check out the FML were:

Perez, Brudas, jakubkwa,Barton (to my peril, as it later became evident) and me.

It turned out that the alleged tickets held by Reaper are no tickets at all, but merely used chocolate wraps - the real thing happened via email. After having solemnly accepted an invitation to play, I received another message, containing all vital info on how to register and start playing. Creating an account was a piece of cake, so was the downloading of essential files, only just over 10 MB in size. However, while my colleagues could start playing straight away, I was destined to wait for almost four days; even though I had configured everything properly and deactivated my firewall, I was unable to connect to the game and had to contact the FM Live support. Help came quickly and efficiently - so far, so good, I thought. Now I could start enjoying the long awaited game!

And right from the start I was really greatly impressed;the layout of the menu and the main screen are somewhat reminiscent of a classic FM look, but to me they seem more pleasant to the eye.

The design of windows and buttons makes it very easy for us to know where to find whatever we need quickly and almost intuitively. I will let everyone decide on the looks of FML for themselves; now I would like to move on to the first steps in the game. We start with creating our own profile, choosing our name and photo, creating our club, picking its name, colours, and a kit.Even at such an early stage emotions kicked in - I was worrying that someone might have already taken my desied club name. Then, I was not sure what shirts I wanted - checked or striped? I know it is not a choice fundamental to the game, but it is a nice touch nonetheless.

Time was ripe for choosing my avatar - a barbarian may be imposing, but his qualities do not go beyond muscles and waving his hands, a ballet witch looks a bit too fragile, a druid...What, you think I am making this up? Not really. This is the moment when you have to determine certain abilities of your computer counterpart. The choices you make are in this case vital. In the words of Brudas: You pick what kind of a manager you want to be - Mourinho or Wenger - your call. By selecting your avatar you already outline future steps in your devlopment in the game.

Next stage: choosing the players for your team - I let the CPU do the job. It picked random players, obviously those of lowest reputation, and I could finally go on to the tactics screen. Just for the fun of it I reshuffled the boys on the pitch. I wanted them to play an open, attacking football and that is where I came in for my first surprise - in order to change any team settings you have to acquire certain skills, so much so that at that point I wasn't even able to control the 'arrows' on the tactics screen.

We are given absolutely loads of new abilities to develop - tactical, coaching and managerial.You will spend the bulk of your time thinking about what yor next step should be. Each skill improvement takes time - first minutes, later - hours, while it will take weeks to become the best in any area.

At last there came a day of my first match in charge. I lost as I had predicted, but this defeat was nonetheless one of the most gratifying I remember. At last I can honestly say that FMLive is an extremely playable and complete game. It is almost ideal. Seconds after the final whistle I started looking for another rival, then another and another...

Great atmosphere of friendship prevalent on the game servers, cultured conversations and mutual support of the gamers is something that a lifeless (in this respect at least) FM really lacks. Soon a first win came for me, then another one. My reputation grew and I honed my skills.

I remember especially one rewarding match experience. The score was 5:3 and I came out on top, eventually. Barton, who had been standing behind me and watching the game at one point didn't give my team a chance. But in the end he had to acknowledge my boys' determination, and I can honestly say that we deserved the win. Afterwards I was asked to play another game so that Barton could avenge his loss. This time we'd had an upper hand throughout much of the game and the final result, 4:0 for Barton, in no way reflected the run of play... I wasn't resentful, though; after all I was defeated not by some AI, but by a human being, by a real player's experience and decisions. A loss after a decent, honest battle is much less bitter. I began to look for a new solution, and I resolved to upgrade my qualifications and to strengthen my squad. For the first time in history, transfer negotiations in FM feel and are different in their shape and dimension; buying a player means winning a real battle of words. In FML noone will let a real talent leave their club for peanuts; each CA point is worth its weight in gold – exactly how much is determined by a real person at the other end of the cable.

Various competitions are the main hinge of FM Live. They are structured around many levels and federations, or game worlds. The choice of your federation is of paramount importance – it determines both your earnings and the difficulty level of your opponents.

Just like in real life – the more you earn, the more challenging the opposition gets. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to devote enough time for research on this area of the game, so I will leave it at that until my next article appears. For now, let me only say that as you win more and more games, trophies will come.

FM Live surpassed my wildest dreams. Throughout the first few hours with the game not once did I come across anything that could be called a bug. Now I know why FM 2008 looks like it does, and I will have no regrets if FM 2009 turns out to be equally dismal. FML is enough fo me – playable, fascinating, nearly ideal.

Small amount of space taken up on a hard disc and modest system requirements are also FML's big assets. Of course, that is not to say the game is faultless – some of them provoked by the players themselves, like for instance lots of offers trying to convince you to buy a talented 35 year old...

The 2 minute tactical break during the game is also quite unrealistic. Even so, I'm eagerly awaiting the reactivation of the game server. We are told that the database is being moved – this probably means that the work on the final FML version is in full gear. If that is the case, then our hopes should become even higher, and we'll be impatiently browsing the websites for info on the release date. But trust me – it will be worth it.